The present invention relates to a needle case for accommodating therein a plurality of needles and making it possible to automatically thread a needle the moment the needle is extracted from the needle case.
A conventional needle case as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,408,691, for example, has a pincushion member through which a plurality of needles are pierced, fixed to the inside thereof. In threading a needle retained in the conventional needle case, it is necessary to extract a needle from the needle case and then pass thread through the eye of the needle. Otherwise, it is necessary to open the needle case, thereby exposing the eyes of the needles pierced through the pincushion member to the outside of the needle case and, in that state, to pass thread through the eye of a needle and then extract the threaded needle from the needle case.
With the conventional needle case, as described above, an operation of extracting a needle from the needle case and an operation of threading the needle should be conducted separately and, what is worse, the threading operation is very cumbersome because the eye of the needle has a comparatively small diameter.